Segment of U.S. 169 to be renamed ‘Civil War Memorial Highway’

The bill designates U.S. 169 from the southern Anderson County line, goes along the edge of Garnett, Greeley and Osawatomie to the southern city limits of Olathe.

“It’s good of them to do that,” Dorothy Lickteig, president of the Anderson County Historical Society, said. “I’m pretty proud to have the designation.”

The designation should help boost history-minded tourism in the area, she said.

The highway goes through some of the most significant areas involved in the Civil War in Kansas and the pre-war fighting called Bleeding Kansas, she said.

Two of the most well-known — and infamous figures — John Brown and William Quantrill frequented Anderson County as well as other counties in east central Kansas, she said.

Slave-state military groups made raids into Anderson County and Brown conducted slaves north on part of the Underground Railroad that ran through the county, Lickteig said. Abolitionists smuggled escaping slaves from the south through a series of clandestine points called the Underground Railroad.

One of the most well-known Civil War figures from Anderson County, Dr. James Blunt, Greeley, was involved in the Underground Railroad and helped deliver a freed slave’s baby near Greeley, Lickteig said.

Blunt’s subsequent history in the Civil War was less Hippocratic — he became a Union major general who won all but one of the battles he was involved in. The exception was the so-called Baxter Springs Massacre, when William Quantrill and his raiders surprised Blunt’s column and a garrison at a small fort next to Baxter Springs.

Blunt later went insane and legend has it that memories of the Baxter Springs battle pushed him over the edge.

Six other sections of highway received designations for other wars that involved Kansans, Rep. Bill Feuerborn, Garnett, said.

A Miami County legislator, Jene Vickrey, was one of the sponsors of the bill, Feuerborn said.

The other sections, mostly in western Kansas, honors veterans of the Spanish-American War, World War II, Korean War, Persian Gulf and the Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom operations.

“Our state and nation have been shaped by those who were willing to risk their lives for our country,” Sebelius said in a written statement. “These designations will remind all those who visit our state of the courage and sacrifice of our veterans.”

The law requires money for the signs for the highways to be raised from the public or private groups.

According to calculations by the Kansas Department of Transportation, that amounts to $22,000 for all seven highways.